


Echo from a Different Voice

by Lynda_Carraher



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Ending, Character Deaths, Episode Related, Episode: s03e24 Turnabout Intruder, Female James T. Kirk, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-21 16:57:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18706489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynda_Carraher/pseuds/Lynda_Carraher
Summary: Janice Lester has hijacked James Kirk's body and is preparing to execute the senior crew members who believe their captain exists in her form. But when the bridge crew makes a stand against the executions, their actions change everything ... forever.





	Echo from a Different Voice

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Star Trek is the property of Paramount/Viacom. This story is the property of and is copyright (c) 1985 by Lynda Carraher. Originally published in Two-Dimensional Thinking, edited by Lee Heller. Rated R for language.
> 
> For various reasons (now moot), this piece was originally published under the pseudonym "DaraLyn Archer".
> 
> Dialogue in the opening paragraphs is lifted from the aired episode. Note that Uhura did not actually appear in that episode, but the author has chosen to place her at her regular bridge position. As the reader will see, this "minor variance" is going to make all the difference.........

The _Enterprise_ bridge was suddenly too big, too empty. Its size threatened to overpower the three figures sitting at their posts. Sitting, not really working. In all three minds, credulity warred with duty. Thoughts chased themselves in endless, fruitless, insoluble circles.

 It was impossible that the slight, slim woman called Janice Lester could, in reality, be Captain Kirk; yet it was equally impossible that Captain Kirk could act as he had … convening a summary court martial, condemning McCoy, Scott, and Spock to death without delay, without appeal…

Sulu voiced it first, almost as though he were speaking to himself, to form the words into physical entities and thereby examine them for some otherwise hidden flaw.

“The Captain really must be cracking up if he thinks he can get away with an execution.”

“Captain Kirk vouldn’t order an execution even if he _did_ crack up, Chekov insisted stubbornly. “Spock’s right. That can’t be the captain.”

It was a decision each had reached privately; it took only someone’s voicing it to make it real.

Uhura’s jawline hardened untypically as she took the next logical, irreversible step. “What difference does it make who he is? Are we going to allow an execution to take place?”

“If Security backs him up,” Chekov asked, “how vill ve fight them?”

Sulu’s voice was as hard as his suddenly flat-black eyes. “I’ll fight them every way and any way I can.” He swiveled in his chair to look at each of the other officers. Something unspoken passed between them, and each turned back to duty stations as the man they had decided was not Captain Kirk came onto the bridge.

Incredibly, he was wearing a phaser pistol at his belt. A frightening jubilation in his stance spilled over into his voice, as if he were announcing a holiday.

“Lieutenant Uhura, inform all sections of the decision. Have each section send a representative to the place of execution on the hangar deck. Mr. Chekov, how far to the Benecia Colony?”

“Coming vithin scanning range.”

“Plot coordinates for orbit. Mr. Sulu, lock into coordinates as soon as orbit is accomplished. Interment will take place on Benecia.”

Nobody moved.

“You have received my orders.” He stood alongside the command chair, arms crossed on his chest, waiting for a response which did not come.

He freed his arms, letting his hands drop to the belt and the phaser. “You have received your orders. You will obey at once or be charged with mutiny.”

From behind him, Uhura could see tremors of rage shaking the form. She slipped quietly from the chair and gathered herself, not allowing herself to think of this man as her commanding officer. His hand moved to the phaser, yanking it out as if he’d never held one, clumsily moving the indicator to maximum force.

“Obey my orders, or—“

Uhura vaulted over the railing in one smooth motion, centering her mind and force in her feet. Her boots caught him full in the small of the back, and he gasped and collapsed on top of her. The phaser blasted upward, ripping a gaping hole in the overhead and killing all but the emergency illumination on the bridge.

Uhura felt a sharp elbow gouging her breast as he fought for his feet, and she screamed, “The phaser!”

Sulu and Chekov hit him simultaneously, Chekov going for the phaser and Sulu trying for the throat. He lashed out and caught Sulu in the face with his left hand, dragging his right arm out of Chekov’s grasp. With a wordless roar, he stepped back, feet tangling in Uhura’s clawing hands. He kicked at her, overbalanced, and fell free of her reach, shouting something unintelligible as he fell.

It seemed to Uhura that it was happening in slow motion. She clearly saw his right hand folding under his chest as he went down, saw the phaser’s working light blink on, saw the pencil-slim, utterly deadly ray spring forth like a snake, the muzzle of the weapon pointing at his own chest.

Her scream was lost in the higher, louder scream of the phaser, and then time shifted back into gear and it was suddenly over. Utterly, permanently, over. An organism exposed to max force phaser fire does not leave even an odor behind.

She pushed herself to her knees, but found she could go no further. The three of them were frozen – Chekov standing between Uhura and the console, his mouth working soundlessly, Sulu turned to stone in the act of picking himself up from the step into the well of the bridge, bright blood dripping silently from his chin to the front of his uniform. The awesome finality of the scene imprinted itself on three brains, burned itself into three pair of eyes, leaving an image that would never be banished.

It was Uhura who recovered first. She pushed herself to her feet, a fixed goal giving her a strength she didn’t know she had. She activated an intercom switch on her board.

“This is the bridge. Belay that execution order. Security Chief Jenner, escort all four prisoners to the bride immediately.” She slammed the key shut without waiting for Jenner’s response, thinking only: _Spock. Mr. Spock will know what to do. He’ll know what to do._

Chekov was moving now, turning in on himself with ashen face and eyes that held no sanity, hugging his arms across his belly as he fell to his knees. Then Sulu was up, swiping at the blood with his sleeve and pulling Chekov up by one arm.

“Pavel … Pavel, it’s not your fault. You didn’t do it.” He looked up at Uhura, wanting her to agree, insisting that she agree. “You saw it, Nyota. No one was even touching him when…” His voice trailed off.

Uhura thought there must be something she could do, something she could say, but she couldn’t force herself to move. She had done the only thing she could think of, and now both her body and her mind refused to do anything more than to wait for Spock, who would know, somehow, what they should do.

It was 60 seconds by the navigator’s chronometer, 60 years by her brain, before the turbolift arrived and five figures stepped into her corner of hell.

Jenner, who had been so relieved by the order to stop the execution, now looked around. He realized he had countermanded Kirk’s last orders in response to the voice of a mere lieutenant. As much as he wanted the new order to be an official one, he still had to confirm it. He looked from Uhura, frozen in her chair, to Chekov, huddled in the navigator’s position, to Sulu who stood beside the navigator, bleeding from the mouth and nose. His mind registered the absence of bridge lights and his eyes noted the dim outlines of the gaping hole in the overhead, where cables looped down like the intestines of some badly-butchered animal.

“Where’s Captain Kirk?” he demanded.

Uhura’s voice swam at him out of the dimness, calm and sure and shattering.

“Captain Kirk is dead.”

* * *

McCoy looked down at the slight form on the bed, sleeping now under light sedation. Some part of his mind was functioning as a doctor’s, telling him this woman had been given far too many sedatives in the last few hours. Some other part of his mind was thinking he would like to join her. Oblivion in any form would be welcome now.

He still wasn’t sure … it was such an incredible impossible claim. Total life entity transfer … Kirk’s _persona_ in this woman’s body … Janice Lester’s vindictive and twisted soul in Kirk’s form…

But Spock was firmly convinced. And Scotty. He had almost been ready to believe it himself as he and the other officers were escorted to the hangar deck and their deaths. Anything was better than believing the Jim Kirk he had known would be capable of perpetrating this atrocity, or that Kirk’s sanity had suddenly crumbled while McCoy – physician and friend – completely missed the transition from rationality to madness. Almost, but not quite ready to believe it.

The alternatives he preferred then, the beliefs he had hung onto, were that there was an organic cause for the behavior, something he just hadn’t found yet, or that Jim – and possibly Spock, too – was pulling another sealed-order desperation move for reasons McCoy hadn’t yet been made aware of; reasons that would be revealed to him at the proper time.

He had been even more convinced of that when the sudden order came to take them to the bridge instead. Especially when Jenner had moved Janice Lester into his view.

The woman had been dead white and breathing in short, painful gasps, as though she had just been dealt a brutal blow of some kind. She had moved in a kind of daze, stumbling twice, until they had entered the turbolift. Then she had shaken off Jenner’s hand, saying “I’m all right now, Chief,” with a crisp voice of authority. Incongruous, that. Going from paralytic shock to cool command. Until they stepped onto the ominously dark bridge and Uhura had told them Jim was dead. Then she had gone berserk – there was no other word for it. Lashing out, impossibly strong, bucking and screaming and trying to push past them. It had taken both McCoy and Jenner to immobilize her while Spock had put her out with a swift nerve pinch.

McCoy didn’t want to remember the look on Spock’s face at that moment. Nor did he particularly want to acknowledge his desperate need to believe what he couldn’t believe before – that this was really Jim in the sickbay bed. It was a powerfully tempting theory now, because denying it meant Jim was dead. Yet if he surrendered to his desperate need to believe that his friend … some part of his friend, anyway … lived, wasn’t he himself flirting with madness? Believing the impossible simply because one had an overpowering need to believe it was an indication that rationality was slipping away.

He forced his mind away from the riddle, forced his eyes and then his body away from the bed and the woman, going into the room where Ensign Chekov lay quietly, staring at the overhead. The body function monitors were reassuring, but Chekov’s face was not. McCoy thought the young man had been crying. He knew the depths of the navigator’s feeling for Kirk. It was different than McCoy’s, born more of hero-worship than of the companionship and caring between equals. But it was a profound feeling, nonetheless, and Chekov had been broken by the events on the bridge more than Uhura or Sulu had. He blamed himself, though if Uhura’s story was true – and McCoy saw no reason to doubt it – Chekov had borne no more responsibility than the other two for the tragedy.

Even Spock, whom Chekov also admired, had been unable to reach the young man, though he had attempted, at McCoy’s request, to do so. McCoy had watched the Vulcan’s unpracticed attempt to express comfort and compassion, and it was difficult to say who had been most uncomfortable with it – Chekov, Spock, or McCoy himself. He was always surprised – and vaguely ashamed of being surprised – when Spock found himself in a situation he couldn’t handle.

He had certainly moved into the center seat smoothly enough – so smoothly that McCoy was unwillingly reminded of Kirk’s court-martial charge that the Vulcan sought command through the use of the supposed transference. McCoy knew that to be false, knew it in his bones and brain and gut, but yet…

The Vulcan had gone on shipwide intercom, and his voice had held none of the stunned, unbelieving terror that permeated the bridge.

“This is Commander Spock. Most of you are aware of Captain Kirk’s recent erratic behavior. The Captain is ill, and has been confined to sickbay for treatment. All findings of the recent summary court-martial have been set aside as null. All personnel are to return to their assigned duty stations. We shall continue our course for rendezvous with _Potemkin._ Spock out.”

Jenner had stepped forward then, impelled by his certain knowledge that Spock was lying, and then had suddenly realized the folly of what he was about to do. With Kirk dead, Spock and Scott under death sentence, the primary bridge crew guilty of mutiny at best and cold-blooded murder at worst, the chain of command was shattered. Jenner would have had to go to the book to determine just who was next in line, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that it was the Chief of Security. And while he would not have been averse to taking command under different circumstances, he definitely did not want command of this particular ship at this particular time.

“You had a question, Chief Jenner?” Spock asked.

Jenner drew himself up. “No sir.”

Uhura and Sulu, like automatons, were moving toward their stations. “All personnel” to return to duty, he had said. And any voice of authority had to be obeyed, especially now, when reality had dissolved around them.

“You three are relived,” Spock corrected them, and punched up the duty roster, opening an intercom. “Lieutenant Kim, Ensign Baron, Ensign Diaz, report to the bridge.” He clicked the switch shut. “I will conduct a debriefing in the captain’s office at 1930. You will all be present. Until that time, you are not to discuss any aspect of today’s occurrences with anyone. Dismissed.”

He had swung away from them, facing the main viewer, the unreadable Vulcan mask covering his face as they filed off the bridge. Only McCoy had seen the tremor in the First Officer’s hand as it gripped the broad arm of the command chair in white-knuckled tension.

McCoy’s attention was yanked back to the present as an off-key duet of shouting voices penetrated the room. He stalked toward the outer treatment area and nearly collided with Howard Coleman, who was shaking off Christine Chapel’s restraining arm, insisting on something.

“I know she’s here. You have no right to keep me away! I _will_ see her. I must!” He spotted McCoy and his attitude shifted to one of entreaty. “Please. She must be here. I have to be with her, Doctor. She needs me.”

“Calm down, Coleman. You’re looking for Dr. Lester?”

“Where is she?” Anger again in the broad face. He moved menacingly toward McCoy, who put his hands up in weary defense.

“What Dr. Lester needs, Dr. Coleman, is some undisturbed rest. You will not see her unless you get yourself under control.”

Coleman stepped back, collecting himself visibly. His face lost some of its angry redness and he shut his eyes, breathing deeply. “Please, McCoy,” he said.

Whatever else this man was, whatever he had done, he was still a man. A man who had seen the woman he loved threatened, confined, disbelieved.

“All right, Coleman. Come with me. But I’m telling you right now, if you disturb her, I’ll throw you out.”

“Thank you. I won’t…”

Coleman trailed behind McCoy, scowling at the locked door of the private room, but not commenting out loud. He stood by the bed, looking down, working his hands together in front of him.

“Couldn’t I be alone with her?”

McCoy shook his head. “I’m sorry, Howard.”

Coleman accepted, placated perhaps by McCoy’s use of his first name and the genuine regret in his voice. Coleman reached out tentatively to touch the woman’s cheek, whispering her name, and McCoy thought … _What harm could it do? Just a few minutes. I’ll be right outside the door…_

Then the woman’s eyes flew open and she stiffened, pulling away from the touch.

“I’m not Janice,” she hissed.

Coleman drew back, shut his eyes as if in pain, and a corded muscle jumped along his jawline. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” he breathed. “I hoped…”

Janice sat up, ignoring McCoy’s movement to stop her.

“You know, Coleman. Tell him!”

“Janice—”

“You _know._ You knew what she was going to do; _how_ she was going to pull it off.” Her hand shot out, gathering the front of Coleman’s lab coat, pulling herself half out of bed. _“Tell him!”_

“She’ll be angry,” he faltered. “I promised…”

“She’s _dead!_ Dead, with my body. I felt it, only I didn’t know what it was until they told me. But she’s _gone,_ Coleman, and you can’t ever have her back. Now tell him, dammit, or I’ll—”

McCoy did step in then, breaking the woman’s hold and grabbing the reeling Coleman with the other hand.

“Tell me what, Coleman?”

There was no vitality left in the man; he would have fallen if McCoy had let go of him.

“…that he’s been telling you the truth. That he – _she – is_ Kirk.”

McCoy looked from the woman, kneeling on the bed with the harlequin coveralls riding up around her thighs and her sandy hair swinging loose around her face, and then looked back at Coleman, who was saying the same impossible thing Janice Lester had been saying ever since they beamed her aboard. He felt his own disbelief begin to crumble, though he tried to hold onto it as a sane and rational conclusion, but it slipped away as he looked again at the woman, at the fierce determination in her posture and the spark in her eyes. He had seen that spark before, in another pair of eyes, and he believed. He no longer cared if it was merely a convenient piece of flotsam in a stormy sea … he _believed,_ and he clung to that belief with the same force he used on Coleman, pushing him out of the door toward the captain’s office and the meeting which was now only minutes away.

***

There were nine people in the room; more than it could comfortably accommodate. The temperature was climbing despite McCoy’s adjustment of the ventilators, and he looked piercingly at Ensign Chekov, still pale as he sat across the table.

McCoy would not have included the navigator in this, but Spock was insistent. McCoy had argued that the ensign belonged in bed, and the conviction was doubled when he guided Chekov into the room. They had bumped a high-backed chair and it swung around to reveal Janice Lester. Chekov had tensed, his eyes burning, and he started for her.

“It’s your fault,” he rasped. “If you hadn’t come on board this ship—”

McCoy pulled him back. “Easy, Chekov. Let’s not go making accusations.”

“She did something to the Captain,” he insisted. “Ve _should_ have taken her to Benecia. Or pushed her out an airlock!”

“Ensign!” Spock’s voice cracked across the room. “Take your seat.”

He had but his eyes still sought the woman, and his expression was one of bitter hate.

Spock ignored it as he began the debriefing.

“I am not going to record this meeting,” he announced, “although I may ask you to repeat your statements later for the official record. It is my intent that everyone here speak freely, without fear of retribution; however—” His eyes singled Chekov out. “—I will not tolerate irresponsible, emotional outbursts. We are seeking the truth, not purgation.”

Chekov looked at the tabletop, but he did not speak.

“Dr. Coleman, I believe your explanation should be first. Please tell us what Dr. Lester discovered on Camus II, and what she proposed to do with her discovery.”

It was a good choice, McCoy decided. Coleman spoke tonelessly, looking at no one, the flat unemotional words painting a convincing picture of the entity-transfer device, of Janice Lester’s obsession to assume Kirk’s identity, of the manner in which it was accomplished. It was the first time Jenner had heard the story, and McCoy watched him covertly as disbelief was replaced by … relief, he realized. It was a good reaction; he hoped they could expect it from other crew members as well.

When Coleman had finished, the Vulcan said, “Captain,” looking at the woman. It suddenly seemed a natural, right, form of address.

As she began to speak, McCoy heard no trace of irrationality, and he identified a familiar speech pattern and ordering of thoughts in the unfamiliar voice.

Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov were next with their stories dovetailing neatly … almost too neatly, McCoy worried, putting himself for a moment in the shoes of a disinterested observer. Even Chekov got through it without breaking down, and as he finished, Janice spoke to him softly.

“You did the right thing, Ensign. Don’t blame yourself for what happened.”

“Yes sir,” Chekov said. Then he looked up sharply, realizing what he had said, what he had acknowledged. “I mean—”

“It’s all right, Ensign,” she said. “It’s going to take a little getting used to.”

Then Spock was asking McCoy to report his findings, and he wished he could give them something more positive. Essentially he could only repeat what he had said in the trial, adding at the end that he was now convinced that the woman’s story was true.

“I just wish there was something objective I could offer.”

“Your _wish,_ Doctor, will hardly stand up in court,” Spock pointed out. “If we want to confirm that the entity transfer has taken place, we must return to Camus and attempt to gain an understanding of how the device works.”

“If we _want_ to confirm it?” McCoy began, but Spock cut him off, templing his fingers in front of him.

“We have an alternative, but it must be a unanimous decision.”

“Spock?” the woman asked, drawing out the name the way Kirk did when he was sure the Vulcan was proposing something he was prepared to disagree with.

“Captain, we must face the likelihood that none of us will be believed, particularly if we cannot repeat the transfer process under controlled conditions. It might be preferable to report your death to Starfleet, and to let a board of inquiry determine whether the mutiny charges were valid. You cannot expect Starfleet to grant you command of the _Enterprise_ in your present condition.”

“No,” she said flatly. “I will not ask any of you to perjure yourselves, nor will I have you lay your careers on the line against that insane mutiny charge.” She looked at each of them, jaw set stubbornly. “We will return to Camus II, we will confirm the transfer, and we will present the truth to an Inquiry Board.”

McCoy didn’t want to say it, but it had to be said.

“He may be right. Even if we can get that machinery to work, there were no witnesses to a transfer between Janice Lester and James Kirk. There’s no way to prove that it ever took place. _No way._ Don’t you see that? They’ll lock you up with all the other loonies who think they’re Jesus of Nazareth or Galileo or Zora of Tiburon.”

There was an odd expression on the woman’s face. McCoy thought of the easy way he had read Jim’s face, and wondered if he would ever gain that ease with this one. He certainly could not pinpoint the expression. Then she spoke, slowly, choking on the words.

“Bones … what if they’re _not_ loonies? What if the minds of Jesus, of Galileo, of Zora, are trapped somehow in bodies the ‘sane’ world has chosen to lock away?”

“You keep on that way, and you _will_ be certifiable. There are dozens of attendant irrationalities in those people, and they’re not capable of functioning in the real world. I think you are. But not in this particular slice of the world. Not as James Kirk. Every criteria … fingerprints, voice prints, retinal scan, brain waves – all the objective methods and devices we use to establish identity – show that _you are Janice Lester._ Do you realize that if we went on security alert right now, you couldn’t control the command computers? Couldn’t even get onto the bridge?”

“Then let’s change the access codes before we _do_ get into a security-alert situation.”

“We canna do that wi’out an identity confirmation,” Scotty put in. “You know that. It’s programmed into the security system.”

The woman changed her tack, not even looking at Scott. “You said objective methods, Bones. What about subjective ones?”

“They reflect conscious lies. But you are firmly convinced that _you_ are James Kirk. And any independent observer would see that’s not possible. Ergo, you’re suffering from a delusion, and need to be remanded to custodial care and treatment.”

“Locked up,” she said.

“Yes. Locked up.” McCoy shifted uneasily in his chair. “Look. James Kirk died in a tragic accident while he was performing his assigned duties. There’s not a person in this room who won’t swear to that.”

“And the trial tapes? The mutiny charges? The execution order?”

“Tapes can be wiped,” Uhura said quietly.

“A regrettable malfunction,” Spock volunteered.

McCoy summed it up for them. “Captain Kirk died as heroically as he lived. Janice Lester puts her life together somewhere else.”

“You’re talking whitewash.” She glared around the table. “I won’t have it.”

“Who the hell are you to say that?” McCoy snapped, coming to his feet.

**_“I am James Kirk!”_** And she _was,_ standing there, facing him down in white fury.

“James Kirk is dead!” McCoy insisted, shouting in his frustration. “He died a hero, or he died a raving madman, but he _died.”_

“He _didn’t! **I** _didn’t! I’m still here, Bones, and I say we’ve got to go back to Camus. She … took me apart there. I want you to … put me back together. Is that so hard to understand?”

McCoy slumped back into his chair, wrung out. His voice was weary. “No, it’s not hard to understand. And that transfer machinery … I suppose it will be investigated, and eventually we’ll figure out how it works. Though I’m not sure we should.” His voice trailed off. He was making some disturbing connections with regard to that machine. They could be opening a Pandora’s box. If a vital mind could be removed from a dying body, it meant … for all practical purposes … immortality. But for whom? And what of the minds already residing in the “healthy donors”? Who would choose? Who would control? The concept shook him profoundly, and it was several minutes before he realized Spock was speaking to him.

“Doctor McCoy, we do have an immediate concern. The captain.” He didn’t even hesitate on the title. That was more than McCoy could bring himself to do, and he avoided any direct form of address as he spoke to the woman.

“What I’m saying is this – Jim Kirk’s body is gone. Not just dead … _gone_. It doesn’t exist any more. You know what happens to an organism exposed to max phaser force.” He shook his head wearily. “Suppose we beam down to Camus, and you get back on that platform, and I remove your mind from Dr. Lester’s body … _where is it going to go?_ Do you have a candidate in mind? Are you going to ask another human being to go through what you’re going through now?”

The wide blue eyes met McCoy’s as the truth, the inescapable finality of it, penetrated. And pouring forth from those eyes was the unmistakable panic of a trapped animal.

She sat down heavily. “I won’t have a whitewash,” she repeated softly. Then she seemed to reach down inside herself, drawing on some hidden reserve of strength. She drew her shoulders back and down, and lifted her chin.

“Mr. Spock. I am still the captain of this ship.”

“You are,” he said. Not in answer, for it had not been a question.

“Then we set course for Camus II. Dr. Coleman, Dr. McCoy, you are to investigate the entity-transfer device. You may draw assistance from any section of this ship – engineering, linguistics – whatever you need, carte blanche. When we have our answers, we will file a report with Starfleet. If necessary, I will personally transfer entities with any member of the Inquiry Board who questions those answers.” She sat back in the chair with an air of finality. “Mr. Spock, you will record the statements we have given here. Then I want a general assembly on the hangar deck – I think we can get everybody in there. If I’m going to run this ship – _and I am –_ I’m not going to go through the explanation four hundred times.”

* * *

It was nearly midnight before the assembly was called, and well after that by the time it was over. That was appropriate, Kirk thought, as he and Spock walked toward the captain’s cabin. Midnight, the witching hour. The time when the mind had its guard down, when things that went bump in the night took on their own truth, and the boundaries of reality flexed and … sometimes … shattered.

The boundaries of Kirk’s own reality had been stressed almost to that point today. Some level of his mind said it accepted; some other level was screaming denial. He simply could not think of himself as a woman, and the realities of Janice Lester’s body were constantly rearing up and smacking him between her eyes. Most recently, it had been turning to say something to Spock and finding himself speaking to a blue-clad arm instead of a face. He told himself he would deal with it later, and it was an unconscious, or at any rate, unacknowledged, need to postpone that ‘later’ which had led him to ask Spock to accompany him to his cabin.

If Spock recognized that need, he did not comment on it as they passed through the door. Neither of them moved to brighten the lights. It was as if they had both seen all they could cope with in the last day.

Kirk took a bottle of brandy out of the locker and offered the Vulcan a drink, which he turned down as he almost invariably did. That, at least, hadn’t changed. He poured a healthy one for himself and sat down, swirling the liquor absently as he motioned the First Officer to a chair.

“What do you think, Spock? Did they buy it?”

“Not all of them, Captain.”

“That’s all right. In fact, that’s good. I wouldn’t expect … I wouldn’t _trust_ … an immediate, passive acceptance.”

“And yet you do expect one from Starfleet.”

“I expect to have something more concrete to offer them.” Kirk sipped at the brandy, watching the Vulcan’s face in the dim light. It was as impassive as always. “You still think I should have gone for a cover-up, don’t you?”

“It would have made … many things less complicated, Captain. Easier, for many people. Including you.”

“Not in the long run. I’ll accept … this—” He gestured at Janice’s body. “—if I have to. But I won’t walk away from my command. Not without a fight.” He considered the Vulcan again over the rim of the glass. “I’ve never known you to walk away from one, either.”

“Incorrect, Captain. I will not abandon an obligation. However, if no prior obligation exists, I will not enter a competition if I am not satisfied with the odds of obtaining a victory.”

“And you don’t think I can, this time.”

“I should estimate the odds at approximately seven—”

“Don’t.” Kirk put out a hand. “I don’t think I want to hear them.”

He put the brandy down long enough to pull off Janice Lester’s boots, stretching in the chair, wriggling her toes. He gave a low chuckle.

“Captain?”

“I was just thinking of those three pair of boots I had custom-made on Rigel last month.”

Spock looked at the slim feet. “I suppose you could have them altered,” he offered.

Kirk stopped mid-drink, and a full-throated laugh waded up Janice’s throat. It met the brandy halfway down, and he choked, laughing until her eyes were damp.

Spock was alarmed, listening for the shrill trace of hysteria. He was not sure he could identify it if he heard it, and he considered calling McCoy, half rising in anticipation of doing so.

“Sit down,” Kirk gasped. “Sit down, Spock. I’m all right. You just made a very funny joke, that’s all.”

“That was not my intention, Captain. I fail to see—”

“Altered, Spock. Altered. I find that a particularly appropriate choice of words. Of word.”

“Jim—”

Kirk shook Janice’s head. “Gallows humor, my friend. He sat forward. “I think I’m entitled, don’t you?” He leaned back, draining the brandy, feeling its warmth swim over her in a surprisingly powerful wave.

“That’s odd,” he said. “I think I’m swacked. On one glass of brandy.”

“You have not eaten today. I understand that alcohol, ingested when the stomach is empty—”

Kirk went on as if he hadn’t heard. “Janice … never could drink.” He rubbed her chin in a gesture Spock found disturbingly familiar, coming from a woman. “Oh, Christ, now I’m getting maudlin.”

“Captain, I think it would be wise if you slept now.” He crossed to the woman, bending as if to lift her from the chair, only to be pinned by flashing blue eyes.

“Don’t even _think_ about it.” There was ice in the voice. “When, Mr. Spock, have you _ever_ put your captain to bed?”

Spock withdrew carefully, as if a sudden motion might break something important to him.

“My apologies, Captain.”

Kirk was not ready to accept it. “Good night, Spock.”

He acknowledged the dismissal with a short nod, and left Kirk sitting there, staring into the dimness and rolling the empty brandy snifter between Janice Lester’s palms.

* * *

Kirk awoke slowly, stiffly, neck aching from having fallen asleep in the chair. The inside of his mouth was cottony, and he thought, _I must have really tied one on._ He raised a hand to brush away the cobwebs; his mind registered the hand’s identity, and he remembered. He was tempted to just stumble to the bed, get in, and stay there.

_No,_ he thought. _If I do, I’ll never get up again. Never. Got to do this one step at a time, one day at a time. Move it, Kirk._ He went into the head, still tasting cotton, and reached for the toothbrush. He had it halfway to Janice’s mouth when he thought, _I can’t use this. This is **his**_.

“No, it’s not,” he said out loud, and Janice’s voice bounced off the walls. “It’s _mine.”_

He felt better when he had finished, and turned on the shower, realizing suddenly that Janice’s jumpsuit was rank with sweat and sleep. Angrily, he stripped it off and stuffed it into the disposal chute, jamming her underwear down after it. When he looked away from the chute, the mirror reflected Janice’s naked body back to him. He stared at the reflection, fascinated and repelled by the fact that he had breasts that jiggled interestingly as he moved, hips that were broader than they should have been, and a woman’s genitals. He remembered the quick desire this body had once aroused in him, but there was none present now.

_I wonder what I ever saw in me?_ he thought, and slapped the thought down, stepping into the shower. He scrubbed hard, all over, purposely hurting her, as if he could peel away the skin to reveal his own man’s body underneath. But when he stepped out of the shower, clad only in a suddenly inadequate towel, he was still, undeniably, a woman.

It had been a mistake to destroy her clothes, he realized as he pulled a shirt over her head. The sleeves hung over Janice’s hands by a good two inches, and the hem hung almost but not quite to the base of her buttocks.

_Good God, **they** jiggle, too!_

He pulled on a pair of shorts and trousers, but the excess leg length of the dark pants pooled around Janice’s feet. When he bent to roll them up, the pants and shorts slid off her hips and puddled at her feet.

_Oh, shit!_ he thought, and called supply … leaving the visual off because he had discovered a sudden prudish modesty in himself. It didn’t matter that the pickup would register only Janice’s head and shoulders; _he_ would still know she was naked and being watched.

He identified himself and requested a pair of woman’s coveralls, size … what?

“How the hell do they come?” he demanded.

“Uh … small, medium, and large, SssCaptain.”

“One of each,” he snapped. “Just leave them outside the door.”

“Yes, SssCaptain.”

He shut off the com, puzzled by the tech’s sudden speech impediment. It took him a moment to realize the crewman had started, automatically, to say “sir”, deciding midway that “sir” was wrong and “Captain” the only possible solution.

At least nobody had called him “ma’am” yet. If they did, he’d punch them out. He looked at Janice’s hands and the sudden, panicked thought … _wouldn’t I?_ … hit him. Those suddenly too-small hands, with their delicate bones, did not look capable of inflicting much damage.  

Ridiculous. Spock had fine-boned hands, and he could shatter a console with them – Kirk had seen him do it.

He realized he was grasping at straws. Spock had delicate-appearing hands _for a man,_ but they were Vulcan hands, bound with Vulcan muscle and underlaid with denser-than-Human bone. And though they would appear fine-boned in comparison to – say – Scotty’s blunt and capable ones, they were still nearly twice the size of the ones he was stuck with now. He flexed them into fists and was appalled at their smallness.

_God damn it, why **me**?_

The door buzzer sounded, and the voice through the intercom said, “Your … uh … coveralls, SssCaptain.”

“Thanks.” It was not what he would have liked to say. “Just leave them there.”

He wrapped the damp towel around Janice’s waist, waited for the courier to leave, keyed open the door and snatched the coveralls inside, closing the door just as the towel fell off. He’d seen a slightly blue holofilm once wherein the leading lady wore only an artfully draped towel for 90 minutes of extremely boisterous action. How the hell had she managed that? Spray-on adhesive?

_I’m cracking up,_ he thought, and pulled on the top pair of coveralls. They were too tight in the hips, and the large ones were impossibly big. He settled for the medium ones out of necessity, but he still felt like an idiot.

Then there was the matter of hair. The bristles of his hairbrush were too short to penetrate its thickness, and after the shower and vigorous drying, it was so snarled and wild he could barely get a comb through it.

He stalked down to the barbershop and plunked into a chair. Janice’s feet wouldn’t touch the footrest.

“Cut if off.”

“SssCaptain?”

_“Cut … it … off._ And if you call me ‘SssCaptain’ one more time, I’ll put you on report, mister!”

“Yes. Captain. Cut it. How?”

“The way I always have it cut.”

“I don’t think you’ll—”

**_“Cut the goddamn hair!”_** It should have been basso profundo, but came out a near screech, and it embarrassed Kirk so completely that he vowed he would never, under any circumstances, attempt it again.

It also embarrassed the yeoman barber, and he gathered his equipment, shaking his head, but thoroughly chastised. He was also as it turned out, thoroughly right. Kirk hated it. It made Janice look like an escapee from a death camp, all huge eyes and prominent cheekbones, with tiny, head-hugging ears that seemed to shrink from their sudden nudity, and a chin that threatened to recede where it should jut. The familiar/unfamiliar eyes stared back at Kirk from the mirror in silent accusation.

_What are you trying to do to me?_ they asked. _I’m a woman, and you’re purposely humiliating me._

_I’m **not** a woman, dammit!_ a bass voice somewhere in his mind roared back.

_Look again,_ the eyes counseled. Amazingly, impossibly, unbearably, they blurred in the mirror, misting, filling with…

Tears? _I’m the **Captain!** Starship captains do not cry over a fucking **haircut** , for Christ’s sake._

_Do you know how you sound? Are you listening to yourself? You can’t buy your manhood back with gutter language. It won’t convince anybody that you’re really a man._

He raised Janice’s head, insisting that the chin not recede at all.

_I won’t cuss if you won’t cry._

_Deal,_ the eyes said, and cleared.

Long silences made the yeoman nervous; as he was not privy to the captain’s internal dialogue, he was now extremely nervous. The captain just sat there, staring at the butchery, and he thought for one awful moment she was going to cry. Then she hitched forward in the chair so her feet would reach the footrest, and got up.

The yeoman had the grace – and the good sense – not to say ‘I told you so,’ but he did offer an apology at the result.

“That’s all right, Yeoman. It’ll grow out, I suppose.”

Kirk started for the mess, glanced at Janice’s watch, and realized he was overdue on the bridge.

Spock was in the center seat when he got there, and he rose quickly as Kirk came into the well.

“Captain. We had not expected you this morning.”

“I can’t run this ship from my quarters, Spock.”

“Correct, Captain.” Spock yielded the conn, and Kirk told himself there was no difference in the Vulcan’s movement, no air of a gentleman pulling out a chair for a lady.

_But if there wasn’t, why did I think of that?_

Spock handed him a PADD as he sat down, and he discovered that Janice could either have her feet on the floor or her back supported by the back of the chair, but not both at once. He scanned the display board, initialing the bottom and handing it back.

“Captain—” Spock held the PADD out to him again.

“What is it?”

Spock indicated the display with an almost imperceptible movement of his head, and then Kirk saw it – the initials _JML_ in a neat, round hand. He took it back and made the correction meekly. He’d have to watch things like that. Automatic responses could no longer be automatic. Not for a while, anyway. He refused to think that ‘a while’ might, in reality, be ‘never’.

He called McCoy. “Bones, how soon can we beam down to Camus?”

It took McCoy a moment to identify the voice; if Jim hadn’t used the nickname, he knew he’d have demanded an identity. “I’m waiting for Dr. Coleman. … _We,_ Captain?”

_“We,_ Bones. Call me when you’re ready.”

The com snapped off before McCoy could reply. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway. Jim could be stubborn as a mule about tagging along on missions where he had no business. And he – she – had no business on this one. McCoy would much rather have Spock on Camus with him, and Jim out of sight on the ship. He didn’t like the way Coleman looked at Jim, with an ache in his eyes.

The ache was there even as Coleman came into McCoy’s office, and he considered beaming down without the captain. He was still considering it when she came in.

McCoy took it all in with one stunned look – the ill-fitting coveralls, the grotesque parody of a man’s haircut on the small, trim head, and he suddenly wanted to sit down somewhere and bawl.

Kirk seemed unaware of how she looked, of the effect on McCoy and on Coleman, who blanched and choked out Janice’s name.

“That’s not my name, Coleman. Don’t call me that again.” She turned sharply to McCoy. “Are we going or are we going to stand here all day?”

“Jim…” The name still came hard to him; the title even more so. “I’d like to have Spock give that device a once-over before we start messing with it.”

“Fine. I’ll call him; Sulu can take the conn.”

“There’s nothing you can do down there. Don’t you think—”

“I’m going, Bones.”

McCoy was not ready for another head-on clash, and he gave in with considerable misgivings. The feeling of apprehension followed him onto the transporter and reformed with him in the broken chamber where the figured wall of the transfer device glowered at them.

Spock had come down with them, and he stepped slowly toward the strange device, seeming to want to experience the totality and purpose of it with all his senses.

“Dr. Coleman,” he said, not looking away from the wall, “would you tell us how Dr. Lester discovered the potential of this device?”

Coleman looked at Spock as if he’d never seen him, and once again turned his tortured eyes to the captain’s slight figure.

“I … there’s some material in her office. I just remembered. If I could get it…”

“By all means,” Spock said, and he turned to watch Coleman shuffle away like a man in a daze.

“Dr. McCoy, I am concerned about Dr. Coleman’s attitude. Do you think it was wise to include him?”

“Maybe not wise, but necessary. I think being here may jog his memory — he really didn’t give us much to go on in his statement. I’ll keep an eye on him, though. If he looks like he can’t handle it, I’ll send him back to the ship.” McCoy looked at Kirk, standing transfixed before the platform, as if she had never seen it before.

“Jim?”

She shook off the stupor. “I’ll be all right, Bones. It’s just … seeing it again … knowing what it’s capable of… It’s a little overpowering.”

Spock was prowling the room, not touching anything, but plainly looking for something.

“Captain, did you see Dr. Lester use any kind of triggering device? How did she initiate the transfer?”

“I don’t… She was on the bed, there, and I stepped over here to—”

“Don’t!” McCoy grabbed her, inches from the platform. “For God’s sake, don’t get back on that thing! As long as we don’t know what triggers it, we’re playing with fire.”

Kirk offered no resistance, but kept staring blankly at the filigreed wall, mesmerized.

“Jim?” It seemed to McCoy that he could feel a low-voltage tingling in his hands where they touched the woman’s arm. Had they already inadvertently triggered the device?

The only course of action McCoy even considered was getting the hell out of there, immediately. He yelled for Spock, yanked Kirk off her feet, and ran. The fact that Jim made no comment whatever about this peremptory handling didn’t even register on McCoy until he put her down outside. Then her listlessness grabbed him with a vengeance, and he shook her roughly.

“Jim! Jim, fight it! Hang on, dammit!”

Whether it was the shaking, or his voice, or merely getting out into the cold air, away from the machine, McCoy had no way of knowing. But one of those factors, or all of them, or perhaps Kirk’s own spirit, gradually began to bring awareness back into the vacant face.

She shook her head, put a hand up to grab McCoy’s arm. “I’m all right now, Bones.”

“The hell you are!”

Even Spock, who had been one step behind them in the headlong flight, untypically sided with McCoy. “Perhaps it would be better for you to return to the ship,” he said.

She managed a shaky grin, with the echo of cockiness in it. “What is this, a conspiracy?”

McCoy’s “yes” and Spock’s “no” collided in the air; the truce had been short-lived.

“Your safety must be our prime concern, Captain. We can hardly work at peak efficiency if our attention is divided.”

“He’s right, Jim.”

“I’m not going back until this thing is settled.”

Both men knew better than to bang their heads against the stone wall of Kirk’s stubbornness. The firmly planted stance and outthrust jaw may have been of considerably different proportions now, but the determination was not altered.

Spock had no inclination to waste time in pointless argument. “If you will agree not to enter the chamber room again—”

“After what just happened? No way am I going back in there.”

The Vulcan nodded curtly and left them, trailing off a statement about power anomalies and exterior measurements, and McCoy contented himself with muttering darkly.

Kirk looked around sharply, then placed what had been bothering him. “Where’s Coleman?”

“He said – dammit, I’ll bet _he_ was responsible for that! When I get my hands on him…” McCoy stomped off toward the building.

“Bones – wait up!”

“Oh, no.” McCoy whirled so abruptly that Kirk collided with him. “You stay put. That is a medical order, Captain.”

“Bones—”

_“Stay,_ dammit! I’m just getting used to you the way you are, and I don’t intend to spend the rest of my career trying to dig you out of a machine or a cactus or whatever else you might decide to pop into.”

Before Kirk could come up with an argument, McCoy stormed off. Kirk stood for a moment as his conflicting emotions sorted themselves out. Bones was playing fast and loose with his medical authority, that was one thing he was sure of.

_Medical order, my ass,_ Kirk fumed. McCoy had come on exactly as Kirk himself might have if someone threatened a woman he cared about – the primal male, stalking off with club and spear to beat the hell out of some menacing upstart.

The realization shook him profoundly, and he realized that even Spock was treating him differently, protecting him, as if he were … a woman. He looked again at Janice Lester’s hands, curled into ineffectual fists. This had to end, before it drove them all into padded cells. McCoy picking him up that way … what kind of insanity was that? Had there, really, been anything at all to run from?

He tried to sort it out in his mind – the deadly fascination the machinery held for him, the blurring of consciousness like slipping into a compelling dream that had drawn him to the platform, the wild, unnamed desire to set himself … _free_ … somehow; to simply spread himself on some solar wind the way he had once seen another being do, until he was part of the cosmos itself, lost to all but memory … now _that_ was madness. Had to be madness.

Or was it something Janice had said to him from his own man’s body, with his voice sounding familiar yet strange in her ears … “It’s better to be dead than to live alone in the body of a woman”… Was she right? Did her body – his, now – retain some gut-memory of that statement, and long for its fulfillment?

He felt the answer must be hidden in some unexplored part of her brain, some place he had to locate and map and mark for hazards so that his conscious mind could navigate around it. Everything had happened so quickly; he had been so busy fighting for the essential right to remain basically who he was that there had been no time for interior exploration.

There still was no time, he decided. Too many other things clamored for his attention, now. He wondered where Spock was, what he was doing, and if the Vulcan’s ordered and logical mind was making any headway in this suddenly disordered, illogical world.

He was about to start looking for his Science Officer when a crash from the building riveted his attention. Some still-present instinct started Janice’s body moving at a run even as his mind registered that any noise audible from outside had to be caused by one hell of a ruckus within. He thought of McCoy and of Coleman, somewhere in that warren, and he swung through the doorway, shouting McCoy’s name.

It was not Bones he found, but Coleman. Or rather, Coleman found him, yanking him off balance as he pulled Janice’s body into the shadowy corridors.

Janice’s feet scrabbled for a purchase on the gritty floor, but Coleman kept her half suspended and unable to use the techniques of leverage and momentum that would have brought her freedom.

Huffing and red-faced, Coleman hauled her into the center hall where the transfer mechanism stood. There was a new mechanism in the room, jury-rigged and ponderous; Kirk spent perhaps one-tenth of a second wondering how Coleman had gotten it into place and what it was supposed to do. Part of it he recognized – a fine-tune portable laser the archaeological team had brought. The rest was as incomprehensible as it was malignant. There was no one else in the room.

“Where’s McCoy? What have you done with him?”

Coleman’s voice was ragged as he tried to make one-handed adjustments to the conglomeration of machinery, holding Janice with the other arm. “He won’t stop us now, Janice. I had to – I didn’t want to – but you see, he mustn’t interfere.”

Kirk, twisting, caught a glimpse of Coleman’s face, and the final, reasonless madness written there raised gooseflesh on Janice’s arms.

“Put me down, dammit! I’m not Janice!”

“I won’t let Kirk have you. Don’t you see what he’s trying to do to you? He’s … _absorbing_ you – eating you alive! Soon there won’t be any of _you_ left, unless I stop him.” His voice took on a coaxing, wheedling tone. “But I will. I’ll do it for you. I couldn’t before, when you wanted me to, because he was wearing your body, you see. But I’ll stop him. I’ll make him leave … you’ll see. I’ll cast him out. You’ll be empty for a moment, but it won’t matter, Janice, because I’ll join you. We’ll be together then, and no one can ever take you away again.”

Kirk felt the hair raise on Janice’s neck as he realized what Coleman was saying. Another transfer, another invasion of Janice’s body … _his_ body, he realized with a start. Coleman’s persona this time, moving into the body of the woman he had loved, casting out Kirk’s essence, leaving it to yet another death. That must be the reason for the new device – to prevent Kirk’s persona from occupying Coleman’s vacated husk.

Kirk felt a surge of possessiveness that stunned and frightened him. Moments ago, he had thought of spreading himself on the wind. Now he realized he could not … _would_ not. This body was not what he had chosen, but it belonged to him now. What Coleman proposed was a psychic rape, and outrage over that violation sent a surge of strength and determination through Kirk.

He clawed at Coleman’s face; Janice’s nails ripped into the skin and Coleman staggered, off balance. Janice’s feet found the floor and Kirk braced her body, pulling away. Coleman lunged and Kirk countered, going for the eyes again, and for the groin, in separate, coordinated movements. Coleman flailed backward, toward his awkwardly-assembled device, and his swinging hands hit a toggle.

The laser’s ruby beam caught him square in the chest, drilling a pinpoint opening that hardly bled, cutting upward through his chest and out the top of his shoulder as he fell through the beam. The light went onward, unstopped, dancing on the transfer grid.

The room was a sudden inferno of electrical whine and cascading sparks, then the rumbling thunder began and swelled as Kirk dived for the toggle.

Too late, too late, and he cursed in frustration as the filigree cracked and the platform crumbled and the whole building shuddered with the fall of the great stone ceiling blocks.

* * *

Kirk knew even before he opened his eyes that he was back on the _Enterprise,_ back in sickbay. It was a certainty composed of many things – of the faint but pervasive scents he always associated with that particular spot on the ship, or the nearly imperceptible vibration in the cool, slick surface under him, of the very feeling of the air on his skin. And he knew, also, that the eyes he opened would be Janice Lester’s.

He was right, on both counts. And the only thing that made it bearable was the sight that met those eyes – McCoy, rumpled and bruised and in a high choler of affronted medical dignity, but McCoy, undeniably. And behind him, Spock. Unrumpled, unbruised, and unaffronted, though definitely concerned.

“Lie still, blast it!” McCoy snapped. “I’m still scanning.”

“What–?”

“You’re the only person I know who could have half a building fall on you and come out of it with nothing worse than two cracked ribs and a bruise the size of a Klingon battle cruiser.”

“Coleman?”

“Dead.”

“And the transfer device? The records? The—”

“Gone.”

“Everything?” The voice threatened to become a wail, and Kirk cut it off, furious and embarrassed by its unreliability.

“It’s gone, Jim. Maybe in 50 years, with every specialist in the Federation working on it, and with a run of luck like yours, they’ll figure it out. Maybe.”

“Spock?” One word, yet it held volumes. _Pull this one off for me … you’ve never let me down before…_

The Vulcan was shaking his head, slowly; something behind his eyes was trying to respond, but he wouldn’t allow it to surface.

“He is correct, Captain. We do not have the necessary resources, and even if we did, we would not be permitted to hold the _Enterprise_ here for the length of time necessary even to begin the project.”

Kirk wanted to roar, to rage and stamp and hit out at something, anything, even these two men. Especially these two men. Because they could look at him … at her … secure in the possession of their own, familiar, masculine bodies.

McCoy sensed the rage, saw it reflected in the spiking waves on the body function monitor and in the barely restrained tremors of jaw and neck muscles. He moved closer to the bed and took the woman’s clenched fist in both his hands.

“Don’t quit on us now,” he said softly, urgently. “We’re going to fight this thing out, Jim, on whatever levels it takes, against all comers. You’re not sick, you’re not crazy, and you’re not incapable of command. And anybody who says different, anybody who tries to take away anything you’ve bought with your guts and your stubbornness and your brain is going to have to go through me first.”

“And through me.” Spock stepped into Kirk’s field of vision. He did not abandon his Vulcan reserve enough to take Kirk’s other hand, but the statement and the movement were enough.

Janice Lester’s overactive tear glands were threatening to embarrass Kirk again, and he had to force down a lump in her throat … one that he had to admit came from his psyche, not hers.

“All right, dammit,” he said, swinging off the table. “Maybe you people can stand around sickbay for the rest of the watch, but I’ve got a ship to run.”

“Indeed you have, Captain,” Spock said, following her out. “Indeed you have.”

# # #


End file.
